


The Zone of Avoidance

by gloss



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Accidental Galactic Empire Acquisition, Alternate Universe - Outer Space, Cordy Woke Up, Everything Else the Same But Sunnydale Is An Enormous Space Habitat, F/F, Post-Canon, VAMPIRES IN SPACE, but a hell of a lot of sci-fi, comics are not canon, for both shows, post-episode 4x22 "Home", post-episode 7x22 "Chosen", there is no science here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-15 00:02:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21024428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: "Hey now, there aren't exactly awesome job prospects out there for under-educated, frequently-deceased former alien hunters," Buffy said."Probably about as bad as the one for ex-actress half-alien visionary broodmares of cosmic horrors, yeah."Cordelia wants to hire Buffy for a pretty important errand.





	The Zone of Avoidance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/gifts).

> LR, I *loved* your prompts so much. I hope this works for you. <3
> 
> Thanks to GS for the speedy as heck beta.

Down on the surface of the Cleave, induced gravity was 15-17% stronger than the galactic standard that most species were accustomed to. Their discomfort was not nearly so important as the need to keep mineral debris in place. It would have taken effort to make one's way through foot traffic like this anywhere in the system, but, hobbled by extra grav, the trip was nearly exhausting. The crowds pushed through the foot paths and tow-lanes every which way. This place was never intended for more than a standard mining crew operating auto-carts and creaking tram rails. Life, however, had a way of crowding and surging forth, exceeding expectations and confounding the most pragmatic plans.

Cordelia sighed in relief when she entered the dojo's grav-adjustment zone. The door to the street latched shut and, with a hiccup and tremble, the floor dropped downward. (Her internal organs and midday meal tried to rise upward to compensate, sickeningly.) The door in front of her heaved open to a broad, dusky space lined with reflexors and littered with mats and calisthenic equipment.

"Your gravity differential's enough to make a person ill!" she called. When no response came, she muttered to herself, "Should really get that checked out."

Machinery muttered to life inside the far wall. One reflexor panel slid aside, disgorging a gaggle of young kids. Most of them were human, but there were several horned ones and a few gill-breathing scale faces in the mix. The crowd pushed toward the exit, heedless of Cordelia, who stood fast against the tide.

"Keep practicing at home and-or in your culturally-appropriate living situations!" 

That was shouted by the teacher, who now stood facing Cordelia and mopping sweat off her face.

"Hi, Buffy," Cordelia said. She'd removed the facial-rec disruptor, but maybe it had been long enough that Buffy didn't recognize her. "It's Cor—"

"Cordelia, I know," Buffy said. She smiled. "Last I heard, you were...napping. Pretty much permanently?"

Cordelia fingered the locket around her throat as she looked around. "I woke up."

"Uh-huh." Moving around the room, Buffy straightened the equipment and picked up cast-off towels. "Are you going to share what brings you by? You're about, what? Seven parsecs from home?"

"Farther than that," Cordelia replied absently. 

Buffy tossed a small, heavy ball toward her. "How much farther?"

Cordelia caught the ball and tossed it from hand to hand. "It's a terrible name, you know. 'Summer's Dojo'? You didn't even use the apostrophe right."

"You've got a better idea?" Buffy asked as she bit, then unwrapped the tape from one hand.

"Easy. 'Get Buff With Buffy'. 'Slay Hard'. 'Exceed Potentials'. That's just off the top of my head."

"Next time I need marketing advice, I'll be sure to come to you."

"Good."

Hands untaped, Buffy pointed at her. "Get to getting to the explaining, will you, because I need a shower and three meals, and I need them, like, last cycle."

"I'll buy dinner," Cordelia said.

"Good. You look like you can afford it." Buffy swept her hand toward the two benches on the short wall to the left. "Please enjoy our sumptuous waiting area while I go clean up. I'll be right back."

While she waited, Cordelia tested the charge on her wrist dampeners, checked the in-boxes of her various aliases, and, finally, settled for fixing her hair and face in the bank of reflexors. Time may have passed, and change hurried on, but she'd never meet a mirror she didn't love.

Buffy reappeared with her hair down, soft over her neck, and wearing a quiet dark tunic.

They regarded each other quietly in the reflexor for long enough that Buffy started to fidget. Nothing much, just a touch of her hair here, a crack of knuckles there.

Finally, for so many reasons she wouldn't know where to start counting them, Cordelia smiled. "Hi, again."

"Hey."

"It's always going to be weird, seeing you..." Cordelia turned to face Buffy and moved her hand vaguely in the air between them. "Live and in the flesh."

Buffy spread her arms wide and bounced on the balls of her feet. "Check me out, I'm a real girl now."

Buffy had always been small, of course, small and fast, a streak of gold and pink outside the habitat. She dispatched the aliens, both Remorae and Lampreys, with aplomb, decapitating the latter with her hard-light katana, slicing the former free from the sucking disks by which they'd attached themselves to the hull.

But now Buffy, though still small (not to mention golden and blush-blossom pink), wore the lines of a grown woman. Her muscles were leaner and longer; she seemed built for endurance now, rather than explosive attack. 

She was beautiful. Always had been, though in the past Cordelia would have found it impossible to admit that fact, but now she was _settled_ into her body and tired around the eyes, and Cordelia found it difficult to look away.

"Okay, 'checking out' has now officially passed into creeper territory," Buffy announced, brushing past Cordelia to sit on a short bench. Having pulled on knee-high boots with old-fashioned grav-softeners in the soles, she planted her hands on her knees and looked up. "Where to? And why are you here?"

"Let's order in," Cordelia suggested, thinking of the crowds outside, how easily—despite her precautions—she could be recognized.

"No way," Buffy said, on her feet now and pulling on a parka. "I got prettified and sweet-smelling because you promised me _dinner_. Out, c'mon."

Cordelia hastily tugged the disruptor veil over her face as they entered the grav-lock.

Buffy didn't have to say anything. The lift of her brow was both inquisitive and, honestly, kind of smirky.

"Accidentally give birth to _one_ alien abomination and no one wants to let you forget it," Cordelia said. It wasn't an explanation, not really, but it would do.

*

They made it almost all the way through dinner—including Buffy's seconds on both root cakes and another protein puff—before Cordelia's cover slipped.

Pursued by adherents of both the major Jasmine cults, they beat a hasty exit through the kitchens, out into the hot, close air of the Cleave night. 

"When you said 'won't let you forget it'," Buffy yelled from deep inside a throbbing, squeaking scrum, "I kinda assumed you meant, like, _enemies!_ Revenge types, vigilantes! Punitive jackasses! I don't know, bored idiots with something to prove!"

"I get them, too," Cordelia said, ducking the tentacles of her nearest assailant. "These are worse."

"Aw," Buffy shouted, slicing a particularly aggressive suitor in two as she jumped upward to avoid his oozing buddy, "they just want to worship you."

"Ugh." She kicked at the prone form of a Jasmaniac. "They need a new hobby. Something productive."

Buffy jumped down from her perch and turned in a slow circle, katana glowing. As it moved, it left after-traces in Cordelia's vision, until Buffy was surrounded by a blue-white oval.

"I think they're gone for now," Buffy said and jammed the katana back into her belt.

"They'll be back," Cordelia said. One of the mid-echelon priests of the Talking Meat Temple reached for her as they made their way back to the main street. His single eye was wide. "Hi, Ron. No hard feelings, right?"

"Never, my most august lady," he wheezed.

Buffy watched with barely restrained laughter. Cordelia pushed past her, muttering, "shut _up_."

"Sure, august lady, mother of justice, bearer of the delicious devourer," Buffy said, catching up and tucking her arm through Cordelia's elbow. "What else did they call you? Mee-maw?"

"Ma maw."

"That's what I said, mee-maw."

"Ma _maw_."

Buffy screwed up her face in concentration. "Mamá?"

"Oh my _God_, Ma, like 'ma', a word for mother, and maw, like...maw. For eating!"

Buffy's lips formed the two (identical!) syllables as if she were sounding out a text in High Old Nepotoronian. Then she shook her head, frowning. "What?"

"Fanatics don't really value wordplay," Cordelia told her. 

At the intersection, they had to wait while a lumbering draco, loaded with freight, squatted for a piss, cutting off the stuttering flow of cart and beast traffic coming in from the exurbs. Buffy tugged the tongues of her boots and rose about ten centimeters off the ground to avoid the foul-smelling urine.

"A little help?" Cordelia asked.

Buffy rolled her eyes. "You don't have any lev-tech in those shiny boots?"

She probably _did_, but excuse her for having paid more attention to her disguises and facial disruptor than fun tech for kids. "Buffy!"

"_Fine_." Buffy tilted, reaching down to haul Cordelia up by the back of her coat. The additional weight pulled Buffy down, until they were both only a few centimeters off the ground. "Better?"

"Not by much," Cordelia said. She dipped downward as Buffy loosened her grip. "But a little, yes. Thank you."

"Was that so hard?"

"Yes."

Ooze and various bits of viscera were drying down their fronts and across their cheeks. Cordelia could smell her own sweat mixing with the draco's urine and the supplicants' saliva. She was suddenly very tired.

"Come inside," Buffy said, piloting her down the side passage that the dojo occupied. "You can wash up here, if you want. Stay over, even."

In the gravity foyer, they were crowded against each other. It was the easiest thing in the galaxy to dip with the floor and brush a kiss over Buffy's forehead. It was the most difficult thing to then pull away when Buffy looped her arms around Cordelia's neck and yanked her down for a real kiss.

"Buffy—"

"It's just a sleepover," Buffy said curtly, cutting through the first floor and leading Cordelia up the back ladder to the third, private floor. "No big."

They climbed hand over hand in the suffocatingly hot air of the narrow shaft.

"Don't you have a lift?" Cordelia asked when she pulled herself up into the bright living area. "Or is this part of your insane training regimen?"

Buffy was the stand-up sonic already, half-stripped down. "Saves on bills," she said without looking over. "Every bit counts." 

The space up here was about a third the size of the public area. The floor was littered with colorful cushions; the only furniture was a narrow table at the cooker and a wide bunk that Cordelia had to admit, if only to herself, looked incredibly cozy. Overhead, a false skylight, its plasti-mold gone cloudy with age, twinkled a made-up set of constellations.

"Sonic's all yours," Buffy said, barely loud enough to hear. Her back was still turned; the line of her shoulders was an acute angle. "Make yourself comfortable, I'll sleep downstairs."

"No!" Cordelia caught herself too late. That was really loud. She crossed her arms over her chest, got another whiff of sweat-spit-grossness, and frowned. "No, don't. It's —"

"What?" Buffy asked. Her voice was still pretty quiet, but soft now, rather than tense. "Oh, okay. You don't want to sleep alone."

How could she possibly have known that? Cordelia wanted to protest, deny or dismiss the mere _suggestion_, but all she could do was shrug, then nod.

Buffy took her by the hand and brought her over to the wash station. She hung Cordelia's clothes over the table as she removed them, then held the sonic in her left hand to wash Cordelia head to toe. The viscera and dried liquid sizzled away, then the sweat did, too, and finally Cordelia was as clean as she was going to get.

"Thanks," she murmured and Buffy squeezed her hand as she hung the sonic brush on its hook.

They moved to the bunk and Buffy hesitated before climbing in first.

"Sleepover," she said, as if they'd both forgotten, and patted the quilt invitingly. "Like back on the _Sunnydale_."

"We never had sleepovers," Cordelia pointed out.

Buffy shrugged. "I had them with Willow and Dawn."

They were kissing then, as quietly as they'd been talking, hesitantly at first. Buffy's skin was hot to the touch, her hair silky, and she liked having her clavicle kissed. She kept butting closer for more. The lights dimmed, then flickered out, and they rolled up together, intertwined, gasping.

"I hope this wasn't part of those sleepovers," Cordelia said at one point and Buffy hummed, lower lip caught in her teeth, moving against Cordelia's hand between her legs.

"Gross," she said eventually, to which Cordelia arched a brow, since she was opening her own legs to Buffy's mouth. Buffy snorted. "The sleepover comment. Not you. Not this."

"Good," Cordelia said. She reclined on her elbows, back arched, then brought one leg, folded, up against her chest to improve the angle. "Oh, _damn it_. That's good, that's —"

Buffy laughed against her, into her, and the vibrations traveled across Cordelia's skin and through her skeleton to double back and play down her nerves.

"We should talk about the job," Cordelia said much later, to the dark, with Buffy sprawled against her.

"Tomorrow," Buffy said thickly. "Sleep now. Dreams, good."

And they were, as it turned out, at least not the usual screaming nightmares.

*

"It's not like you're _busy_," Cordelia pointed out over breakfast.

Buffy very deliberately patted a serviette against her lips. "I'm not _not_ busy."

Cordelia glanced around. They were sitting in the middle of the dojo's floor, takeout tubes and sachets scattered around them. "Yeah, sure, business will pick up any millicycle now. God, I can't believe you're basically a down-market aerobics instructor."

"Hey now, there's not exactly wicked awesome job prospects out there for under-educated, frequently-deceased former alien hunters," Buffy said.

"Probably about as bad as the one for ex-actress half-alien visionary broodmares of cosmic horrors, yeah."

To her credit, Buffy winced at that. "Yeah, but you look like you're doing fine."

"Appearances aren't everything," Cordelia noted and tapped her locket.

"What is that, anyway?"

"I've inherited an alien empire in a pocket universe," Cordelia said and flipped the locket over. "From my daughter-breeder-parasite. I'm rich beyond measure with the proceeds of abominable hungers. The timeline is kerflooey, on account of the alien. And the abominations.

Buffy rolled her eyes elaborately. "Fine, don't tell me." 

"Buffy, I'm not lying."

"Yeah, yeah. So what's the job? For real."

Cordelia tucked her hair behind her ears. "I'm going past the galactic skin."

Buffy, at least, believed that. "Why?"

"To throw something away."

"Uh-huh. Which route?"

"Through the Zone of Avoidance along the Jandorff Filament."

"Why bother when you're in the local zone of avoidance right this moment?" Buffy grinned, but the expression faltered, then faded entirely, when Cordelia didn't respond in kind. "Okay, that's weird and specific and also crazy. Why?"

"I have...an errand. Like I said, I need to dispose of something."

"Aaaaand we're back to creepy-spooky for no apparent reason, great." Buffy leaned back, braced on one hand. "I've been there. Past the filament. It's really nice."

"Heavenly, even," Cordelia noted and Buffy's eyebrow jumped up. "Yeah, I've been there, too. No one told you?"

"Meh," Buffy said, shrugging just one shoulder to rub against her cheek. "I kind of. Removed myself from the gossip web there for a while."

"Understandable, yeah."

Buffy sat forward, suddenly intent. "How do I even know you're Cordelia?"

"You know I am."

Buffy's eyes narrowed as she thought that over. "Do I?"

"Do you have doubts?" Cordelia asked. "Or are you just being obnoxious?"

"Little of both, I guess."

Cordelia grabbed Buffy's ankle and shook it. "Stop it, then."

"Nope," Buffy said, rolling over into a half-tuck and wiggling free. She didn't go very far, however. The escape appeared to be one of principle more than anything else. "Can't, won't, never."

Cordelia lay along Buffy's side, burying her face in the spill of Buffy's hair and inhaling. Buffy made a happy sound, nothing like a word, and wriggled back against Cordelia. Just over the edge of Buffy's ear, Cordelia could see them in the reflexors. 

"Why me?" Buffy asked. Cordelia's arm was over her waist and Buffy covered it with her own, grasping Cordelia's wrist.

"You're the best fighter I've ever known," Cordelia said. "Duh."

"Personal security is super-affordable now."

"Thanks to you, yeah."

Buffy scratched her ear. "That was Willow, though."

"Same diff."

The radiation pulse that activated dormant mitochondrial nucleics left everyone else in the galaxy a little bleary-eyed and woozy. Even in her coma, Cordelia had felt something like a bright star's fall across her vision, washing her in warmth.

"Really not," Buffy said. "She's the bio-physics whiz, I'm just the thing that hits stuff real hard."

Cordelia didn't snicker at that, but she was tempted. "Given all the time you spent with Brits, you'd think your self-deprecation game would be better." Buffy opened her mouth to respond, but Cordelia said quickly, "Anyway. Yeah, I could hire any one of those brand-new Slayers, but then where would you be?"

"...home in my bunk with snacks and a good holo?"

"Seriously," Cordelia said. "_That's_ your future?"

Buffy scowled. "And recent past, why? It's comfy."

"You're being so stupid about this!" Cordelia rolled away, onto her back.

Buffy hopped to her feet, glowering down at Cordelia. "And you're being all pointlessly mysterious-spooky! So maybe we're even!"

Despite herself, Cordelia had to laugh. Once she started, she couldn't stop. Here was the galactic hero, tiny and furious, flushed in the face with fists at her sides, arguing with her like they were both barely out of the gestation nests.

"I don't want a stranger," Cordelia finally admitted as she sat up and looped her arms around her knees. "You're the best, and not only do I deserve the best, I _want_ it. You."

Buffy tilted her head, smirking a little, but then she seemed to think better of whatever obnoxiousness she was about to let fly. Instead, she shrugged and glanced away. "What about your friends, though? Old team, forever loyalties, blah blah."

"Yeah, well." Cordelia's mouth was sour. "They're happily ensconced at the bottom of the Wolfram-Hart singularity and I wish them the very best."

Buffy snorted.

"And by very best, of course," Cordelia said as she caught Buffy's eye and grinned, "I mean—"

"—nothing of the sort," Buffy completed for her. They were all but beaming at each other now. 

*

Buffy holo-hailed her sister to give her the news of the trip. After hearing the third instance of _yes, **that** Cordelia_, Cordelia climbed down the ladder to the dojo and found a training katana to hit things with.

The cultists, regrouping, destroyed the shuttle she'd spent so much outfitting for the journey. The graffiti they left across the docking bay read: **stay with us blessed mother!** and **breed new joy we beg of you**.

"Gross," Buffy said when they visited to inspect the damage. She kicked at a blackened curl of stellar sail. "Sorry about your ride."

"I didn't want to do this," Cordelia said, resting her cheek against the crown of Buffy's skull, "but it looks like we're going commercial."

*

They boarded the _Raven's Widow Calls A Song_ half a cycle before departure. There were safety simulations to complete, covering deep-space languor and emotional dilation as well as how to operate the harnesses and flight cocoons and what to do in case of emergency.

"In case of emergency," Buffy said as she removed her sim goggles, "you're all screwed! Happy landings, suckers."

"It was a lot easier last time." Cordy daubed at the conductive goo on her temples.

"I just had to die, yeah. Again." Soul-transference past the mega-galactic skin wasn't _unheard_ of, but returning back was something that few managed to do.

"And I got hyper-flung through an illicit wormhole by an alien with an agenda."

Buffy cocked her head. "Okay, maybe this way's better."

Cordy waved her hand, held parallel to the ground, back and forth. "Six of one, half-dozen..." and Buffy laughed.

*

Their cabin sported a double-sized flight cocoon, rather than the two singles Cordelia had booked.

"I upgraded," Buffy told her. Her thermal-flimsy gown crackled a bit as she sat at the edge of the open cocoon. "You didn't want to sleep alone."

Something loosened inside Cordelia then; it had already started to warm and flex, under laughter and Buffy's teasing attention as well as her quiet kindness, but now it flung itself free and uncoiled. Cordelia sank down next to Buffy and lay back, drawing Buffy with her.

"Last time, I wasn't alone when I came back," she said.

The warning lights flashed orange then, so they drew their feet into the cocoon and let it inflate around them. Inside, it was the no-color soft light of morning. Buffy's eyes were wide and bruised-looking as she tipped her forehead against Cordelia's.

"I'll take care of that," Buffy said against Cordelia's lips. "If she tries anything again, I'll be there."

"Good," Cordelia said. "And that's why you. You'll take me out if you have to."

Buffy's arms tightened around her and Cordelia tucked her face into the warm curve of Buffy's shoulder. The ship whispered to life; far away, the stellar sails prickled into quantum presence.

"Only if I have to." Buffy pressed her mouth to Cordelia's ear. "Or if you get really obnoxious. Fair warning."


End file.
